If we did away with the EC then there would be no reason for the candidates to appeal to the smaller inland states. All they would have to do is cater to the large metropolitan areas and shaft the rural areas. Thats one of the reasons the EC is still here.
With all due respect, RTF, that is pure speculation. I don’t think you appreciate just how difficult it is to pass a Constitutional Amendment. And thank God it is difficult. There is simply no reason whatsoever for the smaller states to agree to doing so.
Personally, I know that the EC denies the vote to some Americans. I suspect that if you were one of those left without a voice you wouldn’t think it was so peachy keen. But what is the disenfranchisment of others compared to your opinion that it teaches Americans something you think they should know? **
Widespread hatred? Hardly. But since Gallup started asking Americans over fifty years ago a majority have always favored abolition of the Electoral College. I cited this claim in this thread but the info is no longer in the free portion of the Gallup website. **
California would have no influence at all under a popular vote because a popular vote is a vote of people and a state isn’t a person. Californians would benefit by a popular vote because they would actually get to vote for President for the first time ever. You are right, however, in that those Californians likely to be in the majority, Democrats, would stand to lose some of electoral power personally with a popular vote but that would be offset by gains for other Democrats elsewhere. Whether or not that would balance out isn’t easy to determine but it isn’t the straightforward equation you make it out to be. As I say, the only thing to lose by eliminating the Electoral College is an unfair advantage over others.
** Each state decides for themselves how to choose the electors. There is no rule that says they even have to hold a vote and indeed, South Carolina never did until after the Civil War. They just had their legislature pick the electors. Here is some background:
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Hx/ElectoralCollege.html
This is a common misconception. In fact, it is the EC which forces candidates to concentrate upon certain areas and ignore others. Bush had no need to pay attention to New Jersey in 2000 and Gore any to Texas because there was no way they would be able to win a plurality in those states. All of the attention is focussed on the states “in play” ( That is: where the state hasn’t already been conceded to one side or another ) and neither Texas or New Jersey were ( or are. For 2004 Texas is again safely Repub and NJ safely Dem. ) Under a PV everyone would have an equal vote giving candidates an incentive to appeal to voters everywhere, even in rural America, and not just in the battleground states.
We are a federation of states-- it’s not just my opinion. It’s not unlike the European Union. The folks in Sweden get more of a vote than the folks in Germany. You wouldn’t get the states to join together if it were otherwise. Other examples in the US of states having equal weight:
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The Senate, which is much more skewed than the EC in terms of giving smaller states more clout.
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Constitutional Amendments need to be ratified by 3/4 of the states, not 3/4 of the populace.
No one is left “without a voice”. But in certain matters, we vote by state, not by populace. There is nothing irrational, unfair, or underhanded about it. It’s a perfectly normal way for states to form together into a larger union.
I find it highly ironic that someone who deprecates the understanding Americans of their government himself has such a basic misconception of it. America has a mixed government. In some ways, as you point out, it acts like a federation but in other areas it has national powers. It’s partly national and partly federal. That’s not just my opinion, ask James Madison.
Since Madison’s day our nation has become more national and less federal. While Europe does seem to be evolving in our direction there is still one major difference. They are many nations and we are one. We are all Americans. But we aren’t all equal.
Since we have a mixed government there is no implict reason to accept that the presidential election should be a vote of states rather than a vote of people. If you have an argument as to why we should go with the former then I am eager to hear it. And I fully expect any such argument to incorporate the principle of “One state, one vote”.
And yes, there are plenty of Americans left without a voice in who will be our leader. In fact, that group includes most Americans. The votes in the EC represent only the plurality of voters in each state ( and the District of Columbia ). The minorities plus all the Americans living in Puerto Rico and the other insular territories and those living in foreign nations have no weight at all in the EC. Unequal equals unfair.
So, are we going to see a cite for your claim that “The vast majority of Americans don’t understand the difference between the electoral and the popular vote”?
Meh. Districting the electoral votes, with each state’s two extras going to the overal popular vote winner in that state, looks like the simplest, least painful method of changing the system and minimizing the chance of a freak occurance like a single district swinging a key state, and the entire election.
I don’t understand this fiaxtion on the national popular vote winner, myself.
I have no cite on hand for this, but I do recall reading that if all the states had awarded their electoral votes that way, as Nebraska and Maine already do, George Bush would still have won in 2000. It does make intuitive sense…Bush did win 30 out of 50 states, and the Republican candidates did win a majority of the house seats.
Bryan Ekers,
If you would read the thread before posting you would know why a PV is desirable. It would allow every American a vote on who will be their leader. Not just a vote but an equal vote.
You would also see that the districting plan has already been considered and rejected. If there were no districts or states then there is no chance that a freak occurance would swing one and affect the outcome of the election. Under a PV the only way to change the outcome would be a change large enough and widespread enough to swing the entire nation. Nor would the districting plan change the fact that some folks don’t have a vote, none have an equal vote, and no one has any guarantee that their vote will be reflected in the EC at all. Plus, as I said before, it would create more pressure to gerrymander congressional districts.
In short, the districting system solves none of the problems of the EC and in fact creates more.
Why is that any harder to understand than any other official’s needing the most votes to win? The President is the only exception in the entire country. Perhaps the problem is in your background in a parliamentary system, where your votes are 2 stages away from actually picking your PM. Here, we have separation of powers and we hire our chief executive directly. Yes, it’s appropriate to have a “fixation” on having the person with the most direct and extensive effect on our government being the choice of more of We the People than anyone else - and that works almost every time.
The only info I’ve been able to find on the Maine-Nebraska exceptions are that they took effect in Maine in 1969, and in Nebraska in 1991 over Gov. Ben Nelson’s veto. If anyone else has a more complete story of the politics that led up to it, particularly in the pioneering Maine, it would certainly be welcome - that would be a guide to doing it elsewhere.
But since no one disputes that the district system does nothing to solve the basic problems of the EC and in some cases can make things worse there is no need for such a guide. Right?
That is most certainly disputed. It doesn’t eliminate the distortions of the EC, but it does eliminate a large part of them, and does so without requiring an (unobtainable) national consensus on structural changes. The unit rule is a state-law phenomenon and can be changed by state governments. The process has even already begun.
Haha, no you don’t, nor were you ever intended to. The whole Elector system for President isn’t much different than the original system of having Senators be appointed by state legislatures; these high remote offices weren’t intended to be decided by the general public, but indirectly, by their elected representatives.
In any event, I find 2sense’s arguments untenable, as I did the last time this subject was hashed out. In that previous thread, the major flaw of a straight majority was pointed out to him (I’d give credit to the writer, but the search engines are acting up) but he disregarded it. The flaw was that a majority-vote candidate could be elected if he could swing certain major cities, while disregarding all other citizens. The electoral system instead requires that a candidate not only appeal to a lot of Americans (though admittedly a simple numerical majority may not be necessary), but a lot of Americans in a lot of different places. You have to give the small states something, or else they could easily say “Well, those densely-populated Eastern states keep forcing Presidents we don’t want down our throats… so why do we bother to stay in this Union?”
Given that this alleged problem (i.e. elected but not popularly) has popped up only four times in 200+ years, I’d suggest that if a fix has to be made at all, that it be as minor as possible, and districting takes the election one step closer to a straight popular vote (it removes one layer of isolation, you might say) without dumping the system entirely.
As a straight intellectual exercise with no practical value whatsoever, I’ll just do some basic research on the 2000 election, using the districting notion I support as a guide:
State Popular Votes (two electoral votes per state, including Washington DC):
Bush: 30 states = 62 electoral votes
Gore: 21 states = 38 electoral votes
2000 Congressional Elections (assuming that if a district elected a congressman from a particular party, they would also have chosen that party’s Presidential candidate):
221 Republicans elected = 221 electoral votes for Bush
212 Democrats elected = 212 electoral votes for Gore
Total: Bush 283, Gore 250. I declare Bush the winner of the 2000 Presidential race.
Had Nader not been running and Gore gotten his votes, Gore would have taken majorities in two additional states (Florida, heh-heh, and New Hampshire). This would have given Gore the election under the current system, but not under the districting proposal.
Conclusion: putting aside the problems in Florida, Bush won because he appealed to Americans in more different places than Gore, while Gore’s support was concentrated in the densely populated urbanized states (except Texas, of course).
Now, if your goal is to abolish states entirely and re-form the U.S. into a single monolithic bloc, then popular elections for President would be a good start.
How about this argument: It’s the will of the people. I know that some elitists like to disregard that inconvenience, but it does sort of get in the way, doesn’t it? We have and EC system and we have an agreed upon process to change that system if the will of the people is so inclined. Has there even been an attempt to change the system that got more than an inch off the ground? If there has been, tell us all about it. I’m all ears. Perhaps some time in the future the trend towards centralization of authority in the US will tip the will of the people in favor of eliminating the EC. If you think it has so much traction right now, start the process rolling. I’d love to watch.
I think I am missing something obvious here. Wouldn’t CA’s influence increase to 12% (33.8 M / 281 M = 12%)?
Sorry if that wasn’t clear. My point was that CA, as a state, would have to split its influence between the two candidates instead of putting the full weight of all the electors behind only one candidate. If CA were split fairly evenly between the two candidates, it almost wouldn’t even matter what the net vote was. But with the electoral system, even in a close race, CA gets to cast 10% of all the electoral votes for one candidate.
Thanks for the clarification John Mace. That is an excellent point…
2sense wrote —> [Since we have a mixed government there is no implict reason to accept that the presidential election should be a vote of states rather than a vote of people.
If you have an argument as to why we should go with the former then I am eager to hear it. And I fully expect any such argument to incorporate the principle of “One state, one vote”.]
Expect as you might ** 2sense**, but I have an argument that holds that the presidental election should be decided by a collective vote of the people of each state. And one that doesn’t resort to such sloganeering nonsense such as** “one state, one vote.”** As follows…
In an important matter such as the election of a president the creators of this republic knew that only the people who interacted locally through time with a presidental candidate would know his true character. Slogans, letters, buckboard speeches, and long range praises of a worthy reputation wouldn’t do; like handshaking tours and television speeches they are always phony and seldom transfer pertinent information to the citizen on the street.
But nearby, Jack Davis a farmer over in Remlap County, was a good and honest man and an excellent judge of horseflesh, so why not elect him to meet with the friends of the presidental cadidates in Philadelphia and then let Jack decide on our behalf who would best be president of the United States. Good idea.
The same stands true today. Popularity that is gained through news reports, televised speeches, the internet, leaflets, radio, the movies, the telegraph and telephone is always managed, contrived, and therefore, phony. And today we need some people like Jack Smith to elect our presidents.
But we don’t have them anymore.
Instead we have the electoral college. And the creators of the Constitution knew this as well; Territory, like people, needs representation. Even today social and cultural differences exists in different regions and in a federal system such as ours, these differences must be given votes. You know like **States ** and the Senate.
One man one vote! Popularist bullshit.
Recite that mantra often enough and your fave Rock Star can be your President one in the same. __ 
I’d say there are plenty of alternative explanations. There are things about my house that I don’t like, but five years after moving in, I still haven’t fixed them, for one reason or another. It’s not “the will of the homeowner” that they’re that way, but there they are.
As someone pointed out a few posts back,
Might it rather be the combination of that degree of difficulty, combined with the natural tendency of humankind “to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”? Considering that, for over a century, the EC had only been a potential problem, rather than an actual one, that seems to me like a more reasonable explanation to me.
ElvisL1ves,
There are three major problems with the EC as it exists now. Outside the states people have no chance to vote at all. Would a nationwide district system enfranchise those Americans without residency in a state or the federal district? No.
Within the states people have no guarantee that their vote will effect the vote in the college itself. All of a state’s electoral votes go to the most popular candidate and those voting for others are shut out of the true election in the college. Would a nationwide district system ensure that every vote counted? No.
Between the states there is an inequality of votes. Voters in less populous states ( or those in the plurality that is ) exert a greater influence upon the electoral vote than those living in states with more people. Would a nationwide district system give everyone an equal vote? No.
Those are the big problems the current system causes. Your proposal cures or even mitigates none of this unfairness. So what exactly is it that you think a nationwide district system would accomplish? And would that change justify the gerrymandering problems it will cause in the “larger” states?
Bryan Ekers,
Again I encourage you to read the thread before posting. I have already provided a link to the last EC thread.
Here’s what I said in the last thread:
“It is a mistake to assume that a large metropolitan area would outvote several less developed states even though it has the larger population. Instead the city folk and the country folk would split their votes so that the winner would have some support in every area. Don’t be fooled by the “Bush Country” propaganda. It showed only who got the most votes in each county. There were millions of “red” voters hidden under all that blue and vice versa. In fact, no one has won more than Hoover’s 69% of the vote back in 1928 in Los Angeles County. The only way to gain 100% of the electoral power from an area in a contested election is by dividing it into winner take all districts. You know, like we do now. Our current electoral system enhances the possibility of regional dominance rather than diminishing it.”
If you would care to argue yourself that a candidate could win without support outside of “certain major cities” then by all means show us the numbers. Just don’t be surprised when I call you on it when they don’t add up. **
No, it doesn’t. As I have already noted the eleven “largest” states control a majority of the electoral votes. A candidate could gain the White House with a plurality in each of those states and not a single vote anywhere else. One could play the same game starting in any corner of the country and just tacking on neigboring states until an electoral college majority is reached while ignoring the rest. As I said, the EC doesn’t prevent regional dominance. Just the opposite.
I don’t propose to give any state anything. A PV is a vote of people, not of states. It is people who gain. Besides, your argument is that we have to rob Peter to keep Paul from walking away. What about Peter?
This is another common misconception that is used to prop up the otherwise unsustainable. We don’t know who would have won the popular vote in any presidential election because we have never held one. Parties select their banner carrier, candidates campaign, and people cast their ballots within the EC system. Their choices are affected by it. While it is hard to argue that some elections would have gone the another way ( the Reagan landslide in '84 for instance ) but for all we know the EC has never elected the person that would have won a straight popular vote.